5x5 - Restoring 5 X1/9 over 5 Years.

Steve Thomas

Steve Thomas

True Classic
I am setting out to restore my collection of project X1/9s and I expect/plan this to take five years. I have five. Three are 1978, one is 1979 and the fifth is 1982. All are Australian delivered cars. I have owned one of the 78s since 1992. I bought it, loved it, commuted across Brisbane in it [about 600k per week] for a year and then it dropped hydraulic fluid all over the pedals one afternoon... I put it aside and life happened. Having retired in December 2022, I started looking through my accumulated projects and loose ends and browsing through for sale ads. Pure luck, Fate or whatever - a group of four projects [cars and a pile of parts] as a single lot came up for sale in a rural area. It took me a whole 30 seconds to decide to take the opportunity and buy the lot sight unseen. AUD 5k. The bloke selling them had plans to build two track cars and had bought the four with that in mind. His plans changed, hence the sale.

I picked up the first of these today - 1982. Was being modified into a Prototipo copy for use in the Targa Tasmania by a prior owner and then abandoned. Has the rear eng bulkhead removed and is a rolling shell, otherwise disassembled.

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I will pick up the next one next week :)
 
Dug out a pic of my original 78. In transit in 2013 from where we were living out to the farm for storage. Wheels are Remotec 14x6 with slave oversize tyres.
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Car #3 of the batch of 4. This one is a 1980 Series 1.5 - the Australian oddity, Series 2 with 1300/4 speed. It is yellow, the brown is surface rust as it has been stripped and not primed. Despite appearances, this is a good shell.

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Also spent a couple of days last week unpacking a trailer full of parts that can with the cars. Many mysteries :) like 6 steering columns but 3 racks for 4 cars. Have begun cleaning, properly packing and cataloguing to document what I have got so I can work out what the shopping list looks like.

This is just a sample of the chaos.

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Not sure what you're doing wrong, but the pics in post #8, #9 and #12 don't show for me?

If these are the 4 cars spread out in a field that were offered as a job lot on fecaebook a while back, I think you're extremely optimistic hoping to be able to make 4 cars from 4 piles of parts, a more realistic goal might be 2 complete cars... a couple of the cars looked like junkers/parts cars at best to me.

SteveC
 
fiatfactory said:
. a couple of the cars looked like junkers/parts cars at best to me.
Click to expand...
Beauty is in the eye, yes? One is easy, a second is straightforward, the third will need me to find parts but is sound. The fourth is a challenge... It has had the windscreen pillars removed and god knows what else. I haven't looked at it closely as yet - Tuesday.

I am not looking at these as in any way "commercial". I am literally doing it for the mechanical jigsaw pleasure and my admiration for the design.
 
I had no idea pasting even works.
The „official“ method would be to use the button „Attach files“ at the lower left while writing the post.
 
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